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The Wailing Host is a colossal entity, guarding the inner sanctum of the City of the Dead and halting all of Mankind's Souls from reaching the Well of Souls. The Host has tentacles coming from its head, and wears a mask decorated with a single rune to protect its face, which is vulnerable and pink underneath. The Host's body appears to be composed of hardened rock bearing a resemblance to skulls and sports a decorated piece above its head, with runes on either side. The Host sustains itself with the Souls of Humanity, which emanate from it through a large opening in the upper part of its body.

As Death reaches the end of the City of the Dead, the Wailing Host emerges from a huge hole and proceeds to engage Death. Despite the Wailing Host's size and the many hosts that it summons, Death is able to rip off the Wailing Host's mask, grievously injure it with his Reaper Form and finally kill it by pursuing the host when it retreats into the hole.

Death thought that by killing the Wailing Host, he would free the souls of humanity and find the soul of the friend who would help him access the Well of Souls. Instead, the souls were released into further torment, as the Destroyer was drawing power from the souls in the Well.

The Wailing Host is one of the medium difficulty boss battles in Darksiders II.
His main attack is sweeping the arena with his giant claws, which can evaded by jumping backwards and then forwards. He will also try to crush Death between his giant claws by bringing them together before his head. This is the moment to attack. His claws are the main weak-spot and when you have caused enough damage, he will fall, allowing you to deal damage to his head. Each time he has received a certain quantity of damage, he will retreat to his hole. Then he creates a pillar of energy, from which hosts appears, attacking Death. These have to be defeated first before the Wailing Host will return. If you have caused enough damage to his head, Death will rip off the mask of the beast.

In phase 2 of the battle, his attacking pattern is quite alike but now he will try to use his giant fists to crush Death by smashing several time at the arena. But he still tries to crush him likewise as in phase 1 and also continues his sweeping attacks.Though his attacks on a harder difficulty would be a little more troublesome. Skeletons will appear as you fight him and he will summon ghoul serpents from the ground and attack you, delaying the amount of time you can cause damage to him. The battle ends with Death summoning the Harvester as he uses in Reaper Form and stab the Wailing Host in the head. He turns in his reaper form, starts hitting him and when he retreats, Death follows him, now back in his Nephilim form. He kills the Wailing Host as the green fog is seconds later replaced by a red-pink mist.

The Wailing Host's character design was originally Straga's initial concept art, but the concept art was put aside and Straga was re-designed for reasons unknown.

The Wailing Host and his role in the game probably draw from descriptions of Cthulhu and R'yleth in Call of Cthulhu. In the book Cthulhu is described as "dead Cthulhu" and the city of R'yleth as a "nightmare corpse-city". The parallel is further strengthened by the Wailing Host's ability to summon skeletons and Cthulhu's legions of immortal followers.

Using Teleport Slash on the Wailing Host will make you appear on the other side of him, making it easy to shoot.

It is possible to speak to the Crowfather in the final room of the Kingdom of the Dead before engaging the Wailing Host. On occasion, the gates blocking access to the Crowfather will simply not engage before the battle begins, and it is possible to simply walk through the door leading to the Crowfather's chamber to speak with him. However, the Wailing Host must still be defeated before Death regains the ability to fast-travel out of the City of the Dead.